Bronze Age Barrows: Factors Influencing Their Survival and Destruction

This paper analyses the influences on the survival of Bronze Age round barrows in two regions of southern Britain, the Upper Thames Valley and the Stonehenge Environs. It is clear that persistent arable farming in the medieval period had a highly destructive effect on these burial mounds. This can be seen despite later agricultural activity. Other factors such as the type of barrows can also be important factors in the survival and destruction of these burial mounds. Nevertheless, when analysing the distribution of these Bronze Age monuments, later historic land use must be considered as well as the contemporary prehistoric landscape.     

Late Saxon Textiles from the City of London

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS in the City of London have produced an important collection of late 9th- to early 12th-century textiles manufactured from wool, goat hair, silk and flax. The production processes associated with the different types of cloth are here described, together with details of weaving techniques and dyeing practices. Changes in the types of cloth used in the nth century are related to the introduction of new technology and the decline in use of the warp-weighted loom. Evidence is examined for the local manufacture of cloth and for the import of foreign silks. Lastly, attention is drawn to the similarity of the London textiles to those found in other regions of northern Europe.     

A Treaty too Far? Britain, France, and Concorde, 1961-1964

The 1964 Labour government inherited a substantial balance-of-paymentsdeficit. In an effort to deal with the attendant economic crisis,the government sought to cancel a number of costly, high-prestigeprojects, including the Franco-British supersonic airliner Concorde.When the possible ramifications of this were considered, however,it was discovered that the agreement covering the aircraft wasnot commercial but carried the full force of an internationaltreaty. The clear implication of this was that a withdrawingparty could be subject to heavy financial penalties. Cancellation,therefore, it was argued, was likely to cost even more thancontinuing with the project would. The question remains as tohow such a remarkable situation had come about. This articleanalyses the negotiations between Britain and France concerningConcorde, particularly in the early 1960s, which eventuallyled to the signing of the treaty in 1962. It examines the political,technological, and economic imperatives which underpinned thenegotiations and the relationships between the two governmentsand their respective aviation industries. It also considersthe motives of both the British and French governments in theprocess, and concludes that in each case that the technologicaland political motives overrode economic considerations.     

Alternative Ways of Financing Production

Based upon the work of C. H. Douglas, this paper explores the role of debt in the economy. In the 1920s Douglas observed the workings of financial mechanisms within the real economy, noting that they could be modified to achieve a socially and ecologically sustainable economics of sufficiency (see Hutchinson and Burkitt 1997; Hutchinson 1998). Douglas' exploration of the role of debt (loan credit) in the economy accords well with Veblen's institutional analysis (Veblen 1990), while his writing reverberates with Veblenian terminology. As an economist, Douglas is both intuitive and eclectic, and, as Mehta (1983) observes, ‘no writer in economics has made his thought so opaque to the reader.’ Nevertheless, Douglas' rejection by orthodoxy was due in no small measure to the impracticality of tailoring his theoretical observations within the constraints of neo-classical general free market equilibrium theory. Although they gave rise to a widespread popular movement, Douglas' proposals for debt-free finance of production could not be accommodated within economic orthodoxy.